Carefully Prepared, But...

Sitting on a rock yesterday in Central Park, the calm water in front of me stretching to the leafy foothills of the Manhattan skyline, I reflected hard on what I -- uniquely -- could do to add a little flavor and quality to the world around me.

Nothing came to me. So I got up this morning and started another blog.

I noodled around with some personal writing for about a year, but each post got to be heavier lifting than the one before it as my pent up supply of stories dwindled along with my whiny backlog of self-importance as the anxiety of a divorce took up less and less of the rear-view. The connections and banter and snark of Facebooking with a brilliant and bizarre cross section of friends became a lighter, yet still sufficient way to distract and get my head right. 

Professionally, I lead digital marketing and strategy for a big old (literally, old...like, 200 years old) insurance company. A large chunk of my day is spent pushing our company's thought leaders to more deeply immerse themselves in the digital ecosphere, engaging the natives where they gather, learning their language and customs. Hopefully, we will not only earn their trust, but, frankly, better ourselves through the authenticity and transparency that is demanded out here in the wild, but is feared within the safe beige confines of a corporate home office. The best my musing on that NYC rock got me yesterday was that  I should take my own advice. So, this morning I busted out an extra big box of Pop-Tarts and booted up the Wii. With the kids distracted for a couple hours, I plopped down on my back porch to add, yes, another blog to the Internet. I imagine satellites from several countries are right this very instant trained on my keyboard to document this momentous event. Big stuff, this.

My focus here will be on the business side of things, mostly discussions of how corporations and the folks they comprise can credibly and usefully go native in the digital wild. To be clear, I am *not* a native offering sherpa tours. I'm a sunburned tourist fiddling with my own fanny-pack and Lonely Planet reviews. But, hell, there are a couple extra seats -- come along and we can figure some of this out together. I have attention span issues and regard jazz-riff conversational tangents as high art. Thoughts and shiny distractions welcome. Expected, even.

As to the title of this blog? I like words with "X" in them. (And "Q", too. Q is hands down the best Star Trek character ever, and a damn fine Bond character, too. Neither of those points is a reason I like words with "Q" in them, but both are, nonetheless, true.) I competed and coached speech and debate in high school and college and loved the extemporaneous speaking events, so that rather unique word has lingered in my head ever since. The "X" is also a cheap allusion to my slavish devotion to user and customer experience as the anchor of all digital marketing and development efforts, as well as the fact that any strategic exercise is a waste of PowerPoint if it does not lead to improved execution. Cut corners on clever, never on effective. Over the last year, my company has been searching for underserved markets and that led me into some research into the most under-served, under-appreciated, and under-paid demographic in the history of everything: Generation X. (Just saying. It's not personal. Really.) I spend a lot of time with my three kids, Emma and her twin brothers Max and Cole. They can't not slip into what I talk about. Especially Max. Max is not one to be....ignored. Finally, when I checked the Googles for the definition of "extemporaneous" to make sure there was not some embarrassing alternative definition of the term, Webster's spit out what is my current favorite candidate for my eventual, though hopefully not imminent, epitaph: 

Carefully prepared, but delivered without notes. 

[And the Urban Dictionary entry for "extemporaneous" is most, most excellent, as well.]

Some of my best decisions have come from moments spent where rocks meet water. Let's see if the streak continues.